November 28, 1939

    It was a bitterly cold November 28, 1939  in St. Paul, Mn...likely sub-zero...when Albert Negstad and Edith Bergh were married.   I don't know who presided at the wedding, perhaps Rev. Olai Bergh, Edith's father at whose home, 2334 Carter Ave., in the St. Anthony Park area of St. Paul, the ceremony was held. Their wedding photo sows Edith with a knee length white dress, white shoes and holding a huge bouquet of flowers.  Albert is wearing a dark suit, bow tie and white shirt with a light hankie in the breast pocket of his suit.  The 6'2" Albert stands a head taller than the 5'4" Edith. Edith's hair is done with Marcel Waves popular in that day.
   Following the wedding the bridal couple took an extended tour of the east coast driving their year old, 1928 Ford Model A...(the car on which I learned to drive.  They did not return to their South Dakota farm until mid-February.  One of their early...perhaps their first?...stops was at the Palmer House in Chicago.  When Edith signed the guest register she mistakenly signed her name Edith Bergh.
    The Depression soon followed and family and circumstances ended the opportunity for extended travel.  They successfully maintained their farm through the depression even as they raised their four children who were born in 1932( Lucille), 1934(Richard), 1936(David) and 1938(Allan).
    The house where the were married remained in the family for many years.  After Olai's death Edith's sister Agnes and her husband Harold lived there while raising their two children.  Olai's wife, Minnie, lived with Agnes and Harold for many years.  Minnie died on Palm Sunday in 1949 while living with Albert and Edith.
    When Albert and Edith arrived home they were welcome with a traditional chiveree.  One of the persons participating in the chiveree got a bit careless and fired a shotgun blast through the eaves of the house.

Writer's Almanac 11/28/16

Prague
by Stephen Dobyns

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The day I learned my wife was dying
I told myself if anyone said, Well, she had
a good life, I’d punch him in the nose.
How much life represents a good life?

Maybe a hundred years, which would
give us nearly forty more to visit Oslo
and take the train to Vladivostok,
learn German to read Thomas Mann

in the original. Even more baseball games,
more days at the beach and the baking
of more walnut cakes for family birthdays.
How much time is enough time? How much

is needed for all those unspent kisses,
those slow walks along cobbled streets?


"Prague" by Stephen Dobyns from The Day's Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech. © BOA Editions, Ltd., 2016. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Some Thoughts on Aging

   I came across this little poem that expresses how I feel about aging.

We have all been aging

since the day we were born.

Who decided

 that at a certain age

we are suddenly 

"over the hill"?

I am only as old as I feel 

and I feel "on top of the hill.

"I can look backand

appreciate the climb

and I look forward with trust

 to the rest of the journey.

Time to Become Myself:

Reflecting on Growing Older

Pat Corrick Hinton

Hiding In Plain Sight

        There it was right under my nose and I never discovered it.  I've been around corn all of my life. My father always raised corn, some of which he cut in bundles, shocked, stacked beside the barn because we had no silo and fed to the cattle over winter.  The rest of the corn was picked, stored in cribs and later shelled either for feed or for sale.  For the last few years I've raised corn in food plots for winter feed for wildlife.
         I'm reading An Indigenous People's History of the United States, by  Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, for our history book club.  I haven't read very far yet, but, her first chapter is titled FOLLOW THE CORN.  As one might expect there is a lengthy and interesting discourse on the significance of corn for Indian nations.  Then there is this assertion on page 16,  "Unlike most grains, corn cannot grow wild and cannot exist without attentive human care."  which really struck me.  I'd never though about that.  Yes, I've seen corn sprout up from last years spillage, but, corn does not like to be crowded, which I knew. but I'd never reached the conclusion that it "cannot grow wild."    That truth was hidden from me in plain sight.
   ( I suspect that I'll soon write a "Recommended Reading" piece about this book.)

The Birthday Book

    Raise your hand if you've ever received a birthday or anniversary card from the Curmudgeonette?  I see many hands going up because she averages sending about 20 cards a month.  How does she do it?
   My mother helped.  It was our first wedding anniversary, June 6, 1965.  Every anniversary has a material associated with it, e.g.,  the 25th is silver.  For the first anniversary the material is paper so my mother gave the Curmudgeonette a birthday book...and that's all it took...she was off and running...or rather, she was off and mailing.
   The book is an interesting historical document.  Over the 51 years many of the people have died while others have been added.  Mom would be tickled to know the impact that simple gift has had on many lives.
    If you know the Curmudgeonette you know that she has a system. Ten days or so before the end of the month, using the birthday book, she makes list of the birthdays in the next month.  With that list in hand she goes shopping and buys a month worth of cards.  Next she writes on them all and addresses the envelopes writing the date they should be mailed where the stamp goes.  It's my job to affix the postage and mail them on the proper day to reach the intended person close to the day of the birthday/anniversary.   (If your card was late it's probably my fault.)  It is also usually my task to buy the postage...no flag stamps thank you...which gives me the opportunity to make some crack about my sweetie single handedly  trying to keep the U. S. Postal Service afloat.
    And that's the rest of the story!

Intersting tidbit from the "Writer's Alamanac"

Ninety years ago today, in 1926, the United States Numbered Highway System was established. In the early days of automobile travel, the federal government wasn't involved in interstate roads. Various local trails had their own boosters, who gave them catchy names and collected dues from any businesses that lay on the route. The booster organizations would then put up signposts and promote the route, which brought in customers to those businesses. But it was a confusing system for travelers, who were faced with many choices and weren't sure which of the competing claims to believe. In some cases - especially out in the sparsely populated West - trails overlapped one another. And the auto associations came to be viewed with suspicion. In 1924, the Reno Gazette commented: "In nine cases out of ten these transcontinental highway associations are common nuisances and nothing else. They are more mischievous than constructive. And in many instances they are organized by clever boomers who are not interested in building roads but in obtaining salaries at the expense of an easily beguiled public." Wisconsin was the first state to step in to organize and number its trails. The federal government took up the cause and on this date unveiled a standardized numbering and signage system for United States highways.

Recommende Reading: The Song Poet

   A Memoir Of My Father: The Song Poet, Kao Kalia Yang, author of the Late Homecomer.

   On the book jacket Jane Hamilton-Merritt writes:

   "Kao Kalia Yang allows us to hear the whispered sorrows and hopes of those transplanted onto foreign soil among strangers.  I predict that this mystical and historical memoir--of her Hmong family's suffering in Laos, of the rigors and fears of their life in a refugee camp, of the shock of finding themselves unprepared for city living in Minnesota, and of the pain of discrimination--will become a classic."

   One of the best books I've read and I give it a 5 out of a possible 5.

The Stone Age?

    My visit to the rock pile, referenced to in an earlier blog, on The Prairie was occasioned by our thinking that we should order grave markers.  When I was ordained in 1968, my home congregation, Sinai Lutheran Church, gave us two plots in their cemetery.  They said something to the effect "You will likely move around during your ministry and may not have a permanent location.  We'd like to give you two plots in case you'd ever like to use them."  A very thoughtful action on their part. The plots on which we agreed are next to my uncle Henry Negstad and his wife Inga, who were childless. Over the years we've maintained ties to the that community so it seems logical to be buried there.  It also seems logical that we take the next step and arrange a grave marker.

     The stone for which I was searching is large, flat, rock shaped like huge flagstone and has a perfect round hole through the center.  It is slate grey in color.  When I asked my father about the hole he told me this story.  After grandpa Lars secured the rights to the finish the homestead on the farm there were many large rocks on the land which interfered with farming.  Some of them were much too large to move with oxen or horses.  So grandpa would chisel a hole deep into the rock, fill it with black powder...dynamite had yet to be invented...light a fuse to the powder and the explosion would shatter the rock.  The pieces were light enough so they could be moved by horses.  This time when dad told about grandpas's work I had the presence of mind to ask at least one question "How long would it take him to chisel a rock?"  Dad said he might be able to do one in a day.

   It boggles my mind to think of him, with a sledge hammer,  10 or 12 pounds perhaps, spending days chiseling rocks.  My nephew still has the two faced sledge hammer.  One face looks as it has hardly been used while the other face has been rounded significantly from its use.  

   A stone with a hole through it would be an interesting backdrop to our grave marker.  Perhaps I'll look again.  I also remember one in the grove of trees surrounding our farm yard.  My nephew, who now lives there and owns the property likely wouldn't mind.

Trees on "The Prairie"

   It was a small, rectangle, piece of ground too steep to cultivate, that we called "The Prairie" in our east quarter section.  That was a good name for it because it was, and still is today, virgin prairie, because it has never been plowed.  Every year we cut the prairie grasses that grew there. raked it into piles, pitched into hay racks and hauled it to the cattle yard.  There we unloaded the hay, with our pitch forks, next to the fence of the cattle yard making a long narrow stack.  As winter reduced the grazing opportunities for the cattle we supplemented their grazing by pitching hay from the stack over the fence for their dining pleasure.
    A huge rock pile on The Prairie drew my attention recently as a I searched for a particular rock. (That rock and my search will be the subject on a later blog post.)  Farmers often chose sites that were difficult to farm to pile the rocks that they removed from the fields.  Likely my grandfather, Lars, piled the first rocks there, my dad added to the pile, as did I, participating in one of my least favorite farm duties...picking rocks.
   Two tall ash trees, perhaps 30+ feet tall,  guard the rock pile.  A warm surge of emotion surged through me as I noticed that these trees had generated a host of small trees growing around the rock pile, successfully competing with the grass. It brought back the memory of dad saying "I finally got trees to grow by the rock pile on The Prairie.  I've been trying for years to do that."  It's no wonder that it was difficult to start trees there so far from the farm yard the regular watering was not feasible. Now they not only stand sentinel to my dad's dedication to planting trees but are generating new growth.  They also are reminders of how the suppression of prairie fires alters the fauna.
    Both my grandfather and my dad were tree planters and I've tried to continue that tradition, having planted thousands of trees, but, this tradition is a topic for a future blog.

Lost Memories and Too Late Smart

     Having just passed another birthday I'm acutely aware of the passage of time and all the people I've known who are now dead.  Increasingly, I'm aware that with every death what I lose are the shared memories.   Half of my high school graduating class, admittedly a very small group, have died and with their deaths, only I remember some of the stories.  With one of those classmates I shared twelve years of school; 8 years in a one-room country school and 4 in high school.

      "There used to a be a sod house there."   What?  And I didn't ask 20 questions???  Such as: Who lived there?  Where did they go?  Do you remember them?  If not, do you remember the sod house? Were there other buildings?

      It was harvest time and I was driving the IHC Farmall H pulling the 10 foot IHC grain binder which my dad was riding.  We were cutting oats and we had paused nearby.  I noticed that on one small spot, perhaps 20 feet by 20 feet the oats were taller...more verdant.  There was no apparent reason...the spot was on the south crest of a hill, near the road that ran north and south, just east of our land...that that land should be more productive.  When I asked my father about it he told me of the sod house. Do I ever regret that I didn't pursue that bit of information with some questions!
    My father was born in 1883 and moved with his parents to "the" farm in '85.  My grandfather, Lars Negstad, bought the right to finish a homestead on the quarter of land (160 aces or a quarter of a section) which lies immediately west of the land on which the sod house stood.  Therefore, it's very possible that Dad would have had direct memories of the house and its inhabitants.  In any case, he certainly would have known something about them.

     Prior to someone reading this, I suspect that I am the only person in the world who knows about the sod house.  Such memories are often lost.

   I have two requests of any who read this;

      1. Tell stories!

      2.  Ask questions!